Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
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I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.
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We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts.
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The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.
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I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.
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These little daily choices that we're so used to thinking are irrelevant are the most important thing we do all day long.
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Is there really anyone, besides Rudy Giuliani, who prefers the new Times Square?
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It's possible to make things that aren't just money-makers. Something wonderful for its own sake.
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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.
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When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.
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I need an office, so I can have a place where I don't write.
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There are a lot of things that we crave, there are a lot of things that would make us perhaps more fulfilled in a sensory way that we just say no to.
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Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't.
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I will never come around to the idea of an anthropomorphic God. I'm also uncomfortable with the word 'God'... I'm agnostic about the answer and I'm agnostic about the question.
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Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.
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Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.
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I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.
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As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.